[Closed] The sunshine also brings out the litter louts.

Not just the parks. Quite a few coffee cups left in our local woods as I rode round last night. Probably not kids...

My dofe group walked to a local area and counted half a dozen bbqs, 1 chair, some family photos, about 100 scorched next catalogues. We gathered them and took them out. The farmer has pretty much given up because he gets abuse when he asks folk to tidy up. Small town he's asking folk he's known all his life.

Society is not going well.

We picked up numerous tubes on White’s Level the other day..............

Yep, spent 60minutes picking up litter at our local BMX Track on Saturday, went last night and it's like someone has emptied the bins all over the outfield.

So instead of grooming the track on Wednesday night I'll be out picking litter again...

Just don't get where this attitude comes from, there are two bins prominently placed in the track, one next to the exit, yet people would rather drop litter where they stand rather than deposit in a bin they have to walk past...

Don't get me started. Fly tipping around Sherwood is just so depressing.

A batch of asbestos sheeting tipped the other day in its protective plastic in the side of the b/w. Garden waste chucked on the roads next to the forest. Tyres, settees and plenty of burnt out cars.

Dreadful. Wish I could do something.

Fly tipping around Sherwood is just so depressing.

I was in the Pines car park first thing one morning this weekend and some dirty bastard had dumped an open and very full babies nappy on the floor.  Filthy scumbag, why should anyone else have to pick up their offsprings crap.

Society is not going well.

This thread suggests otherwise. Yes there is always going to be complete bulbs in society, but then there will be those who clean up after them. It's not right, but it is what it is.

Said it before, I think it's a complete oversight on LA's part not installing IR camera's at flytipping hotspots. Cheap installation nowadays, and one £1000 fine would pay for the lifetime of the camera.

Society is not going well.

Agreed.

Litter & fly tipping are a depressing sign of something even worse…

Said it before, I think it’s a complete oversight on LA’s part not installing IR camera’s at flytipping hotspots. Cheap installation nowadays, and one £1000 fine would pay for the lifetime of the camera.

fly tipping increased by about 1000% round here when they started charging (non-commercial) for certain types of waste at the local tip.

pretty sure it would be more cost effective just to take the waste.

Cameras will just shift the behaviour to elsewhere… areas with political clout would get protected, and other areas would get worse..

Sadly it brings out every kind of lout. I'm not sure it's changed that much over the last thirty years. There also were and always will be *********.

The best you can hope for is to not be one of them.

That and for some proper funding for the Police to deal with the worst offenders.

Or, make it easier/not charge as much to get rid of waste legally at the council tip, wouldn’t that help? Saw a couple of mattresses dumped in a lay-by on my road ride yesterday 🙄

I saw this thread before setting off to work, and thought to myself "I bet Edinburgh's meadows will be grim as there were hundreds of folk out there last night when I rode home."

I was wrong. At 8am they were close to immaculate. I could see one guy with his dog who had picked up an armful of bottles and cans and was taking them to the bin.

Well done Edinburgh, you rock.

Or, make it easier/not charge as much to get rid of waste legally at the council tip, wouldn’t that help? Saw a couple of mattresses dumped in a lay-by on my road ride yesterday

My local tip is free for all non commercial vehicles, yet fly tipping of what is very obviously domestic waste, not trade stuff, still happens all the time. ****s are just lazy.

Our tip let's in vans. I don't take builder waste but have made many a trip without any trouble. However went to the local tip in Cornwall when staying at a cottage, as instructed on your last day they asked if youd mind taking any bin bags up to the tip. Being a good citizen I did so, on entering I was immediately collared because we were in a Ford ranger, and I was tipping trade waste. I explained it was household waste from a local cottage and he begrudgingly let me chuck them in the skip.

Well done Edinburgh, you rock.

Mmmmmm. Edinburgh rock.

Nae wonder you're hyper Perchy.

Nae wonder you’re hyper Perchy.

I've always been  a bit of an odd fellow. 😉

Pretty sure litter is much worse than when we were kids, but then disposable incomes are higher and if you wanted a coffee you sat in a cafe and drank it from a china mug, rather than dumping a disposable paper/plastic hybrid thing in the local park.

I blame thatcher!

Seriously there is a point behind that.  during the IRA bombing campaign street bins were removed all over the UK.  a generation grew up not being / getting used to using bins.  that generation are now bringing up their own kids.

I really think that is a part of the issue with litter - not flytipping

The chase was disgusting yesterday morning, the remains of about 20 picnics just left for someone else to sort out, and some turd had been having a water fight with water balloons on a field. WTF, there are no taps, and they'd left thousands of scraps of rubber for the deer to eat. Great.

street bins were removed all over the UK.

I dont understand this. Especially in train stations. I can’t see how removing the bins stops bombers. I could leave a small rucksack in a train station (hypothetically of course!) and be well away from any blast very quickly - doubtful it would be moved safely or even reported  in a few minutes. Anyway the worry is more on suicide bombs and cars now.

I was in the Birmingham New Street station last week and it’s absolutely massive but I couldn’t find a single bin.

I cycled through Finsbury Park earlier, a huge park in North London. Amazingly 98% of the rubbish was bagged and left next to bins, which were overflowing and couldn't take all the rubbish that was around. In the most case people had been very considerate and had tried

T'is true wot TJ says.

In Canary Wharf (where I work) all of them got taken out when we had the Bomb Of Doom, and it took about 11 years 11 months and 11 days before anyone thought about putting them back in. We all ended up knee deep in litter and needed snorkels to breath..

But he's got a point.. Bombers and Terrorists have a lot to answer for. Where else are we supposed to put McDonnalds carcasses and Costa buckets??

Thankfully some people are reasonable types and we are now getting bins back in most places I visit, yet there will always be pressure on Councils to both remove them thereby saving massive cost in refuse disposal/collection.. Which I think is a more pertinent point.

To give an example, Hayling Island Sea Front.. managed by Havant BC now employ Norse are their bin/refuse collections.. they come around about 5 times a day on the part of the beach we use for surfing.. thats a lot of collection and a lot of operational costs that plenty of councils simply can't afford...

I cycled through Finsbury Park earlier, a huge park in North London. Amazingly 98% of the rubbish was bagged and left next to bins, which were overflowing and couldn’t take all the rubbish that was around. In the most case people had been very considerate and had tried

Considerate would have been taking your crap home with you, surely?  If you can carry it there you can take it away again.

I live in Northampton which is in the top ten towns in the UK for fly tipping -

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/northampton-ranks-in-top-10-list-for-worst-fly-tipping-town-in-uk-1-8484744

The town is an absolute disgrace.  There's a growing number of people who seem to think that when you are finished with something you simply put it on the street and someone else deals with it.  Not sure when it started but it's gathering pace.  The council is broke, there's no money to tackle the problem so it's not going away anytime soon.

Hard to pin-point a decade but I'm going for the 90's when it started.. Yoof's all growning up in a time of "no bins" and now adults simply pass those years of experience onto their kiddos..

And the rise of Drive-Through-Take Away joints.. McDonnalds got hammered years ago for encouraging litter then they took hold of the problem and employed cleaners/litter patrols and such, now a lot of folk see this and sort or act accordingly.. Far less McD's than sodding Costa/Starbucks cups/Co-Op plastic sandwich containers jettisoned from vehicles.. Even the M27 has signs up on the motorway "you is on camera innit, take yo' shit home wiv Ya's bro.."

But blimey, who hasn't seen the rural degradation at the hands of Fly Tippers..?

Hampshire too is full of those pikey gets who just dump household rubbish, fridges, freezers, wardrobes and hoovers ... depressing but then you turn a corner and it's still a green luscious lane heading no-where important.. I reported a van about a year ago that I saw chucking plasterboard out the back into a farmers gate entrance to a field.. rode past it, turned around and took a picture and asked the guy to smile then he tried to chase after me whilst spouting some choice words.. which was caught on camera/video and I posted the incident to HCC who I hope took action.. never found out if they did because rightly it's none of my business.. I just reported it.

Just do your bit, take home what you bring...

Pretty sure litter is much worse than when we were kids,

All depends when you were a kid but for me it was the 70's so just before disposable packaging really took off.

As stated - you drank coffee in cups, you ate food on a plate, you had drinks in glass bottles which may have had a refundable deposit etc,.   There was less potential for littler so therefore less litter.

Plus society was clearly better before Thatcher created a culture of everyone just looking after themselves which has continued ever since.

I wonder if part of the problem is simply education.  I appreciate that "put stuff in bins" shouldn't be a difficult concept, but.  When I was young I remember national anti-litter campaigns, "keep our country tidy" and all that jazz.  We've now got not only a generation who have grown up without that, but also a second generation whose parents didn't grow up with that.

See also, the Green Cross Code.

Just got an email from wife about her morning's work:

<p style="font-weight: 400;"> spent it clearing litter from riverside car park after the weekend – took 12 of us all morning!  Looked like the Somme when we arrived</p>

<p style="font-weight: 400;">This is in a National Park!</p>

Personally, I think it's down to some peoples mindset. Everything nowadays seems to be "not my job" or "someone else's problem" or "someone else will do it" All this, and at the same time saying "it's a shit hole round here"

There's a common area at the back of the tenement in front of my house.  Putting rubbish in the bins is too much for some people so now there's a discarded telly box (the box the telly came in), a shopping market trolley, some old carpet and some bits of glass.  Someone decided that putting a bag of rubbish actually in the bin was too much and left it beside the bin.  The rats or gulls got in about it and the contents were strewn about all over the place. Last night there was a couple (I suspect the chief offenders) sitting sunning themselves in the middle of it all.

There's also a thread going about litter on Cycle Chat, where I've posted: "Many years ago I was mountain biking up on the moors and came across an abandoned tent, partlally broken, containing a soaked sleeping bag, a mat and some food debris and litter. I was quite worried as I thought it looked as if somebody had been camping and something bad had happened to them. Oh how naive I was - I now know that it's common practice to buy a made in China tent, air bed and sleeping bag kit from ASDA or Tesco, use it for a couple of nights then dump it for somebody else to clear up. I passed the site of a festival near Stavely and was absolutely shocked at the field of abandoned gear that a handful of volunteers was clearing up. This is absolutely disgusting and supermarkets should be made to stop feeding people's filthy habits in this way."

One factor that caused my rapid disenchantment with trail centres was the huge number of identical plastic drink bottles, all as sold in the centre shop and all dumped along the trail for the first couple of miles, presumably by cyclists, who I had previously thought intelligent and aware people.

I passed the site of a festival near Stavely and was absolutely shocked at the field of abandoned gear that a handful of volunteers was clearing up.

I think it was Glastonbury who made something good out of this - they donate all the salvaged gear to charity, so the sleeping bags get distributed to the homeless and suchlike.

The Glasto model is an admirable one, yet even they have an area for folks to dump unwanted gear yet most folk leave it where they erected it..

I wonder if other Festivals have similar policies??

But then, have to say, that model still teaches folk it's ok to abandon stuff where you left it..

Hard to pin-point a decade but I’m going for the 90’s when it started..

Don't kid yourself on. There has been people littering for as long as there has been people. I'll bet the percentage of the population who litter will not be much different now than it was 60 years ago. The difference now is there is far more stuff to litter with and less effort by local authorities to clean it up. People also cover more ground today whether for commuting, visiting friends and family, shopping and for leisure purposes. Therefore you get to see more areas and more litter as well.

One factor that caused my rapid disenchantment with trail centres was the huge number of identical plastic drink bottles, all as sold in the centre shop and all dumped along the trail for the first couple of miles, presumably by cyclists, who I had previously thought intelligent and aware people.

Where is this? I’ve ridden lots of trail centres in England and Scotland, and I’m surrounded by them in Wales but never noticed this. Yes, there is litter but not the vast amounts suggested.

I despair. Littering is my pet hate. Last night on a little pootle on my bike down quiet country lanes I saw some serious fly tipping, heart breaking.

i also volunteer for the NT and I’d happily Man a sniper rifle and hide in the bushes to shoot anyone who leaves dog poo bags behind/throws them up a tree/in a bush.

When I become king it’ll be made legal to kill anyone who litters dead in the face on the spot

I dont understand this. Especially in train stations. I can’t see how removing the bins stops bombers.

It’s because many of the bins were proper street furniture, either concrete or cast metal, with a removable bin inside for emptying. A bomb placed inside one of those caused huge amounts of damage because of the contained nature of the explosives, and the shrapnel from the shattered container. Plus, a bag left in the open is suspicious, a bag containing explosives stuffed into a large metal or concrete box in a street or other public space is inconspicuous.

I went for my usual lunchtime stroll around the park today and managed to collect a carrier bag full of plastic water bottles, empty cans and glass WKD bottles.  Even the carrier bag was one I found in the park.  It was one of those 10p Sainsbury's ones.  A better class of litterer in Milton Keynes.

I think most bins have been removed due to fires not bombs

Quick search of twitter shows it's a nationwide issue

Shit like this makes me think that maybe a 3rd world war to reduce global population isn't such a bad idea...

(As long as someone else cleans up the mess)

That or Soylent Green...

Regarding bins, a good solution would be the French style Poubelles, with a massive underground sack that's lifted out by crane.

Anyhoo, enough about my anatomy...